Tip leads to capture of escaped murderer

Posted: Monday, January 10, 2000

MATT CURRYThe Associated Press

DALLAS - A convicted child killer from North Dakota who escaped authorities by crawling through the roof hatch of a prison transport bus was arrested Sunday in Dallas after a tip prompted by the "America's Most Wanted" television show.

Kyle Bell, 32, whose escape enraged North Dakotans, had been living in Dallas since October, the same month in which he fled, the FBI said. He was being held without bond Sunday at the Lew Sterrett Justice Center pending extradition to Bismarck, officials said.

FBI agents and Dallas police arrested Bell around 1 a.m. at the northeast Dallas apartment where he had been living. They took him into custody after a call from another resident at the complex, who saw an episode featuring Bell's case on the Fox program that seeks citizens' help in capturing fugitives.

In North Dakota, where Bell had been convicted for the murder of an 11-year-old girl, the capture was announced in a news conference by Gov. Ed Schafer.

Bell was arrested at the apartments without incident, but he wasn't eager to go, FBI Special Agent Lori Bailey said.

"He was a little angry and a little bit belligerent," she said. "He was compliant, but he would never admit to his true identity."

Bell displayed a fictitious driver's license that identified him as Chris Larson, she said. Authorities said his identity was confirmed by fingerprints and tattoos on his chest.

Schafer said Bell had shaved his mustache and cut his blond hair short, noting his appearance was markedly different from the pictures authorities had distributed.

A $50,000 reward had been offered for information leading to the capture of Bell, who is also a convicted child molester. But Schafer said he was told the tipster wasn't aware of it.

Bell had been working at temporary jobs including plumbing and as a parking attendant, Bailey said. He was living with a woman who had five young children and who apparently did not know Bell before he came to the city.

Officials would not identify the woman.

Bell has been a fugitive since Oct. 13, when he escaped from a prison transport bus while it was stopped at a fuel station and restaurant at Santa Rosa, N.M.

He was being hauled by a private company, TransCor America Inc. of Nashville, that the state of North Dakota had hired to take him to a maximum security prison in Oregon. Bell apparently freed himself from handcuffs and leg irons with a key smuggled in his shoe, and then he crawled out of a roof hatch on the bus.

TransCor guards did not notice Bell was gone for at least nine hours. The circumstances of his escape angered North Dakota lawmakers and prompted an interim legislative committee to question TransCor executives and state corrections administrators about their procedures.

Schafer said he would seek to have TransCor pay authorities' expenses in tracking down Bell.

Bell was convicted last August of murder in connection with the disappearance of Jeanna North, 11, of Fargo, who has not been seen since June 1993. Bell was once a neighbor of the North family.

At the time he was convicted in that case, Bell was serving a 40-year prison sentence, with 10 years suspended, in two unrelated child molestation cases. He had been serving that sentence at a Wisconsin prison.